The DNS hierarchy flows from an inverted tree that begins at the internet root, which is signified by the .. As we'll see, each . in a hostname or domain name signifies another layer in the tree.
All hostnames terminate with an inferred .; however, they are frequently written without them. Take a look at this diagram:
From right-to-left, each dot in a hostname corresponds to the next level in the inverted DNS tree
The root and top-level domain nameservers are required for resolvers to discover which authoritative nameservers to send any given query to. Now look at this diagram:
The DNS system forms an inverted tree hierarchy with the internet root "." at the top
The root nameservers refer to the internet root, that is, the "." that terminates the entire inverted tree that forms the DNS. The nameservers for a given top-level...